In the grips of a global pandemic with social distancing and international travel restricted, the world has shown its strength in resilience and creativity. New opportunities have arisen in the face of these obstacles, providing us with new options to connect with the world and bring us all closer together. 

While in most recent years only two successful candidates could be granted the award, the switch to virtual conferences has provided a boom in global accessibility and the BCLA stepped in to support & fully fund the Frans Oosterhof conference award in 2021 so that seven students could be granted this award. Congratulations to following awardees who were awarded this grant to attend the 2021 BCLA Virtual Clinical Conference and Exhibition which was held on 13 – 14 June 2021:

Mr Isaiah Osei Duah Junior, Ms Wendy Ofori-Asare, Ms Lynette Delali Ameatekpor, Mr Frimpong Isaac from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana, and Ms Asantewaa Aboagye MacCarthy, Mr Emmanuel Addai and Mr Maxwell Sowah from University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana. We were thrilled to see that the top performing candidates were equally placed across the two universities and were gender-balanced.

The Frans Oosterhof Travel Grant is a grant awarded to talented Ghanaian level 500 Optometry students to attend one of the major international Optometry conferences. This year a total of 20 applications were received by the deadline of 22nd May 2021. This application pool included 8 female and 12 male students.

The Optical Foundation Advisory Committee – consisting of Doctors Eric Papas, Fayiz Mahgoub, and Thomas Stokkermans – was tasked with judging the applications. The selection criteria included academic record, work/research experience, leadership potential and evidence of volunteering in the community.